I had to be satisfied with that. If I pushed any further, I would be declaring war on the organised gangs that were battling further to the south. The organised gangs were fighting over the really good real estate near the main Playpark, with the Voodoo Boys being the largest group slugging it out.
I didn't much care for the Haitian gang for a number of reasons. Really good netrunners frightened me, for one, and secondly, after they acquired a block of real estate, they would conduct what could only be described as an ethnic cleansing of the area. It hadn't reached the level of being a pogrom quite yet, but anyone living there that wasn't Haitian was told, in no uncertain terms, to get the fuck out.
They were as insular and clannish as West Virginia hillbillies and thrice as dangerous. I could understand their motivations after their entire island was destroyed-they wanted a new home. And Pacifica was probably ideal due to the huge amount of computing and networking resources just ripe for the taking.
However, I didn't think it justified their methods here. I had also watched them briefly ally with another gang before betraying them and wiping them out to the last man when they had outlived their usefulness, so they could not be trusted at all, which was unfortunate because I would likely have to deal with them at least a little due to this invasion. It would depend if the Night City government mobilised their militia forces to expel the invaders, but most people on the City Council, aside from Lucius Rhyne's Devolutionist Party, were suggesting that the NUSA not be provoked.
Sighing, I stood up.
I didn't have a lot of furniture down here because not a lot of furniture could withstand the mass of this body, so I generally just sat on a steel table that I had welded a back on to make something akin to a chair. One of the guy's called it an Iron Throne, so I had the idea to weld weapons of defeated enemies to it, but I haven't had the time thus far.
I grabbed my sword and snapped it onto place on my back, and walked up the stairs. On one shoulder was a small boxy-like snub-nosed turret, and on the other was a greatsword's hilt. I liked to think that I was intimidating. John and the man who ran the Militech Eclipse was waiting for me. The latter didn't have a name, at least not one he would volunteer.
All I knew about him was that he hated Arasaka and, in the past, had lost himself to his grudge against them. He said he had lived as almost a total cyberpsycho for at least a decade on the fringes of society. Something snapped him back to partial lucidity, though. Still, he had been the closest to an out-and-out cyberpsycho that I had treated, which had been a little scary, although he had calmed down significantly since then.
He was also the most mercenary of my tenants. Apparently, he wanted to buy himself a Gemini and retire, so he was taking Edgerunner-style jobs around the city now that most of his stealth systems were functioning again. I couldn't replace his finger rocket because what the fuck... who made a finger into a rocket-propelled grenade anyway? But I had replaced the finger with a standard version and got the rest of his systems working.
Me and Wakako gave him most of his jobs, as he was too scarily capable not to keep busy. Otherwise, someone else might end up hiring him against my interests, so I made busy work for him when other things couldn't be found. I had also, as Taylor, told him that I would be more than willing to buy his Eclipse as a trade-in, which would save him quite a lot of money, too. At his rate, he'd have enough money saved in a year or less.
He was also the Borg I wanted to see the most right now. His voice synthesiser spoke in an affected German accent, but I was almost positive that wasn't his real background. Still, it gave me a name to call him, "Herr Schatten, John... do we have any ID on the visitors?" For some reason, Herr Schatten, or Mr Shadow, seemed to think the name I had picked for him was very amusing. When I asked about it in the past, he just called it somewhat familiar and nostalgic, then refused to comment further.
John shook his head, "Not precisely. The news is saying it is the NUSA. Night City government is denying it, though. Surprisingly, the NUSA is also denying it."
Shadow shifted from left to right and said, "NUSA Army. 10th SFG, from the joint base in El Centro. I'm confident."
I groaned, which sounded particularly unsettling coming out of my speakers. Just what we needed, an entire Airborne special forces group. Did that mean that the NUSA was invading? Was the 10th setting up a beachhead in the south?
I asked intensely, " The whole group?!" The whole 10th Special Forces Group was the equivalent of a brigade of hardened special operators and all their accoutrements, including artillery and armoured vehicles.
He shook his head, "I think just the second battalion, along with the group HQ elements."
Professional curiosity got the better of me, "How did they insert a whole battalion, including a brigade HQ?"
He shrugged, "Standard doctrine would involve a company or platoon-level HALO jump at high altitude, secure a landing strip and land the rest using heavy-lift fixed-wing assets. They don't have an airport, so I think they probably did parachute in but called in air cav elements to insert the rest in low radar-cross-section AVs and helicopters. That is congruent with the reported helicopter and turbine noise in the south of the district, too."
Well, that would limit the equipment they could have brought with them. They wouldn't have howitzers or armoured scout cars, at least. I said, "Herr Schatten, would you be willing to recon where they are bivouacked and possibly divine any intentions that they have? We obviously can't fight them, and I don't want to in any case."
He shifted from left to right again and said, "These guys aren't the junkies with Saturday night specials or greaseball mobsters that we've been up against before. They are all well-equipped operators, one and all. I won't be able to get too close, or they will detect me."
That wasn't a no, I felt. I pressed lightly, "I don't need to know where their Colonel is bunking, just the edges of their AO and whether or not they're expanding to the north."
Finally, he nodded and then vanished from my optical and thermal sensors and departed. He was still slightly visible on my synthetic aperture radar as he darted out of my line of sight, but the return didn't look like a human body, so it could have been discounted as a radar artefact.
"Alright, sit tight for now," I told John, who saluted and headed back to his room, which surprised me. I kind of forgot sometimes that almost all of the Borgs living with me were former servicemen and women, so it wasn't unusual that they might fall back into this former behaviour. I had, as Taylor, even been told by a couple that they'd liked the atmosphere of the building, and it reminded them of the camaraderie of their time in the service.
I had never told them that I was their boss, now, though. Still, I was the biggest Borg on the block, and people tended to look to me for leadership, especially since I was the one who laid down the rules about living here and was in charge of the building. The rules mainly consisted of "don't be a psycho" and "don't endanger the building." Pretty simple. Oh, yeah, and "don't hassle the ripperdoc if she is making house calls." Since that "ripperdoc" was me , I felt that was the most important rule of all.
I had set up a whole clinic, including specialised equipment to perform maintenance on Borgs, here in the building, and I tended to come over as needed. There was quite a bit of curiosity about who "the Big Guy" was that he could get a Ripperdoc qualified to work on full body replacements and pay an obvious merc company for security services, but whenever people asked Taylor, I just demurred and said I was paid in cash, and that was all I cared about.
Speaking of merc companies, Kiwi was calling me. I wanted to talk to her, so this was good. I picked up and immediately asked, "Where are you at right now, Kiwi?"
"Me and first squad are on a standard Scav sweep-and-clear around the abandoned buildings nearby. It's like whack-a-mole, I tell you. I just saw the news. Do you know what is going on?" she asked.
I relayed what Herr Shadow had told me and got many obscenities in response. She said, "If they start pushing north, we will have to abandon everything, you know that, right? We can't fight the fucking Army."
I did, but I didn't think it was likely. Or, at least, I hoped it wasn't likely. They couldn't take even this district with just a battalion. Unless a division was being mobilised and surged up from LA, then I suspected that they were here to establish a credible, defensible beachhead where an infantry division could assault from. Either because such an operation was planned, and if so, we really would have to either abandon everything or turn our coats. Alternatively, it was because they wanted the Night City government or the Free States to think such an invasion was planned. It was likely the chaos in Pacifica that had them thinking such an operation could be conducted in the first place.
Honestly, with how heavily armed and unruly the Night City populace was, it would likely take a close to a Corps to truly pacify the city, and I didn't think the NUSA could spare that kind of manpower. The stage where mercenaries were fighting mercenaries was over, mostly, and now front-line units were fighting each other all along the border. I was hoping that this was just a feint. The Free States would have to honour the threat if it was credible and shift forces to box up Night City from the north if they thought the city would fall to NUSA, which might be taken advantage of by the NUSA side somewhere else.
Colorado had already fallen to the NUSA, and some unstated accommodation was made between the Republic of Texas and the NUSA, so they weren't threatening to nuke each other anymore, so it was mainly just the Pacific Northwest doing the fighting now.
Kiwi continued, "Second squad is holed up in the Apartment building on Nymph Boulevard, acting as a Quick Reaction Force for the area. But I'm gonna wake third and forth squads up and have them come to Saint Cog's."
I grimaced, "I told you not to call it that, Cado. " Much to my displeasure, the name "Saint Cog's Home for Unwanted Borgs" had become popular, with a few of my tenants actually spray-painting little cogs around the area as if they were gang signs. Could I actually call them tenants if I didn't charge them rents? I did make a little money acting as an ISP and renting or selling braindance equipment to them, though, but it was all small potatoes.
It turned out that most of the Borgs here were hardcore gamers. I suppose that made sense if you were in a deteriorating body to escape into a nicer virtual one, but they were BD enthusiasts, one and all.
"Hahaha, I am Kiwi again, don't you know? Once I saw that Biotechnica wasn't going to squash you, I figured it safe enough to resume many of my old relationships and connections. Got my old tats redone, too," she said, amused. That was still a risk, in my opinion. Taylor Hebert's link to Gram was semi-public knowledge, and it could be easily found out who my mother, Annette was. That was probably protection against such a minor infraction all on its own. Kiwi was not me, but on the other hand, she was different than she used to be too. She had a force of arms that she didn't have before, so it might not be seen as worth it if they just wanted to send a message.
"Hold!" she suddenly said, her tone entirely different and serious. "Stand by, Taylor. Let me call you back." She then disconnected.
I blinked, hoping she didn't run into any Army men. She and her team looked far too uniform and paramilitary. The NUSA Army would likely consider her forces of Night City military forces scouting around in the absence of any other data and attack.
She called back before I could worry too much, and I immediately answered, "Hey, T. A few Voodoo Boys stopped us on our patrol; everything seems peaceful for right now, but they want to talk to The Big Guy. Is he... uhh... available?"
Kiwi knew that I drove around the Dragoon like a drone. It would be hard for her not to realise it was me since she helped me bring it back to the base, but she thought I just had some jam-resistant wireless tech to do so. She was a little sceptical about it, but after she couldn't hack into it herself, she shrugged and admitted that it seemed pretty effective.
Still, I scowled. I was kind of expecting this. "The Big Guy" had a reputation of being a hikikomori, after all, and he had only left the building a couple of times to eradicate a particularly large group of Scavs. I had done this primarily to build a reputation, but also because they had actually been a threat to one of Kiwi's squads.
If the Voodoo Boys wanted to talk to "him", then they'd have to come to the Siren's Call, and maybe they thought just walking up to the front door wasn't precisely healthy.
I nodded and said, "Yes... he's up and about, as they say. But give us at least fifteen minutes before you lead those sneaky fucks back here if you don't mind."
"Roger," she said, but in a jaunty French way, sounding more like Ro-jair, "There's three of them, one runner and two that look like muscle. We'll tell them we need to finish the sweep before we come back. Expect us in twenty."
"Take no chances with them. Do not trust them," I cautioned her again. She acknowledged my warning with a thumbs-up before disconnecting the call.
I wanted to rub my chin, but it wasn't the same when it was made of an armoured plate, so I briefly had my Taylor body do it while writing a chart for a surgery I finished a little while ago. Yes, that was better.
How should I handle this? I thought for a moment before pulling up the chatroom for the building. I used it to make announcements, and all of my tenants were on it. I sent out, "Having a meeting with one of the Voodoo Boys. I need two volunteers to loom behind me, looking dangerous. Also, I will be disabling the building wireless in five minutes, including activating jamming systems. Please shift to a wired connection if you require continued net access. This disruption may last one to two hours."
There were a number of replies, a few dismayed at the wireless cutting out. One man claimed he was in a 100-man instanced raid and couldn't disconnect. He begged someone to come into his room and plug him in, and someone finally agreed after a suitable bribe was offered and promised.
A couple of the guys agreed to come downstairs, including John, and at about the same time, I noticed Kiwi's third and fourth squads jogging over to my building. I told them to take positions where they could defend the approaches to the building, and possibly respond to the main room but to make themselves not be seen.
